UGA Shorts

When you have a family of 11 children, you have a little bit of everything.  We have had all the good stuff , ALL the bad stuff things you cant even imagine.  We had my uncle who was cleaning a gun  point it at my aunt in jest, point it at the floor and pull the trigger and it went off.   Close call.  We also have ppl like my mom and dad who did everything right.  Always.  My parents got married in 59 and before having children were taking care of my aunt who was a baby at the time.  My grandpa got really burned and Cathy was just a baby so mom took her and grandma stayed with grandpa in the hopsitial. He got burned over his arms and neck and chest .   He always wore long sleeve shirts after that.  Didnt talk much about it.  He was under a gas station that somone didnt turn off and it blew up.  My uncle pulled him out by his arms which he said the skin was hanging off.  Its hard to believe he lived.   I remmeber seeing a pic of him sitting in a white hospital bed without a shirt with black down his arms where his shirt didnt come and on his face up to where he had his cap on.   He lived to his nineties but he wouldnt budge on those shirts.  The only thing you really couldnt ask him was birthdays.    He thought my mom’s birthday was on the 7th of decemeber for yrs ..  her birthday was the 6th.   The same thing has come up with an aunt of mine but this one is not grandpa’s fault.   Hell, Im suprised they knew all their names.  Took me 4 yrs.

I really have to tell this.. and this dosnet have anything to do with mom.. well, except through dad…  its too priceless, it must be said., forgive me dad 🙂

I think I have made it clear my family was close.  When I was growing up, that was certainly true.   When we had holiday dinners the men tended to congregate in the living room watching ballgames and the women in the kitchen, cooking.  My dad is kinda……reserved , type A personality.  But every once in a while…………

It was Christmas day and we were at grandma’s for dinner.   Mom and I had gotten dad a pair of Georgia boxer shorts with little Uga’s on them.  I dont know why.  He dropped his drawers in teh living room to show all the guys.  Then I guess he got to feeling guilty, because he went in the kitchen and dropped his drawers again to show all the women.   I mean literally dropped his drawers to his ankles.  I thought it was sweet he liked my gift so much but really, its okay.  They still get a laugh out of it.

Camping, hair rollers and pools and Irons

I am a child of the 60’s.  Granted I was little, but I was there.  Back then it was all about dippity doo and rollers and eyebrow liner. Oh and mini skirts.  Well  mom didnt have mini skirt.. well maybe one.   Anyway..  When I was itty bitty, even we knew not to mess with moms hair.  It was some big bad secret what they did to do their hair that made it all stland up like a beehive but we really didnt want to know.   I cannot leave this story out because I think its hysterical, even tho dad may not think so.  And it just shows another hard core to my mom that she rarely showed.   They were at my other grandma’s.. his moms’s house.   I dont know what my dad was thinking.. obviously not a lot.. when he decided what he did, but I guess he thought it would be funny.   My mom had just spent an hour on her hair, rolling it, washing it… hey it was a big deal in those days… and he had the bright idea to put watermelon in her hair. Some stupid argument no doubt.   He doused he head in watermelon.   Since I was not there, or dont remember this , its all hear say… but Im told she walked in the house and didnt speak to him for a week.   Guys you dont mess with a womans hair.   I felt sorry for dad sometimes.  He had good intentions, they just never seemed to translate well.

Camping is a lost art.. or almost lost art.   We used to do it all the time when I was a child.  It was cheap, we didnt have a lot of money.  Course for mom and dad it also had to do with who we were going camping with.  I dont think we were too far from home, probably Notley Dam but it was always nice because we had a pool and bathrooms.   One of my earlist memories is being camping and playing in the pool, it was about lunch, and they were playing ” Rock the Boat” on the loud speaker before they came over and said that president Ford had been inaugarated.  It was a piece of history and I was in a pool swimming at a campground.  Not bad.  Thats still one of my favorite songs.

They dont tell you the best part of camping.  The best part is, you get to sit around a fire with marshmellows and chocolate and graham crackers.   It only works right if you get the marshmellow black.   But at some point while your sitting around there, knowing your going to have to sleep in a bus with a bunch of smelly other kids they start singing.   And you know all the songs because you grew up singing them.  They are southern gospel songs. And you wind up singing them in like 6 part harmony.   There isnt anything like it.   And since the smores was not your first concern ,  You take the sticks you cooked them on and made them sparkle and wave them around cause thats way more fun.  Mom was always the first to get the  moves down and had the best smores.

I have one more story,  I said this would be boring if you didnt grow up with me.   But it was an important moment in my moms life.

We went to Fla, I dont remember where ,  probably like Fort Myers.  My mom was afraid of the water.  But I was getting bigger and loved to swim and would go out in the deep end and leave mom in the shallow end.  I dont know if all of you remember those hair scarves  with the little “round” on their top iwth different colors.   It was very 60’s. My mother had one of those on her head and jumped off in a corner of the shallow side (it was like 4 feet deep) and somehow her feet came out from under her and she sank like a stone.   He “kerchief” floated up to the top.  I was small, but I thought mom had died. She eventually popped up.  Half strangled but pissed off and deteremined to learn to swim.  And she did.  She took a mask and went in the deep end and forced herself to swim from one side to the other in the deep end.  ( and no body mess with her!) And she taught herself to swim.  And still afraid of the water.

…..Tough as Nails

I think at one point I almost thought my mom was way too soft.  Just proves that at 32 yrs old, you can still be stupid.

I was very opinionated and always accused mom of being to quick to give in to dad and should have stood up to him more ( like when they were building their house) but she would always come back with, perhaps you could hold your tongue a little bit more and pick your battles.  Sigh……. she was always right too , very annoying trait.   She was just always the peacemaker, between dad and I, between family, work.. etc.  And she was pretty good at it. I acutally  think ( hope) I inherited some of that quality from her, especially at work.  But I was to find out she had a tough side ( other than the whippings I got from her when I was little and deserved one). She once whipped me all the way down our front yard ( on the behind and not hard) but I was about 3 and had darted off next door when they werent looking to look for a supposed bear that the neighbors kids had captive .  I know now , it was the kid brother in a bear suit, but I digress.  There was a river below our house, and then the highway… they were frantic calling for me.  She met me in the middle of the little side road we lived on and spanked me all the way to the front door.  But that was just well deserved discipline.

I had this bright idea to have a tatoo put on my arm.. now Im in my 30’s Im like , ” I can do what I want”.  My parents hated it.  Its tasteful, just a band around my upper arm, that can be easily hidden.  My dad didnt see it for a whole year, on purpose, ( he knew about it ). I was living in Wilmington NC , newly divorced and she came for a visit while dad was on a golf trip.  Wilmington is on the coast so they have some really good seafood.  We drove down the wharf for lunch.  I was driving her car waitng for a spot to open up.  When it did I slid into it.  Now there was another car on the other side of the road waiting too. I didnt see them.   We get out of the car and this van pulls up behind us and this man and woman get out of the car and walk around.  The woman is hollering and the man is walking with a cane.  She’s saying how they had been waiting on that spot and we just took it.  And couldnt I see her husband was handicapped ( it was not handicapped spot).  I immediately agreed to move the car and mom was also on board.  I apologised, no problem, I thought.  As we’re walking to the car to move it, the woman says something about my tattoo and what can they expect with me having any manners.. or something similiar.  That made mom mad, she turned around and said “excuse me?” The woman then proceeds to question my ubringing by someone that would let me get a tattoo at all.  That made me mad.  It was fixing to get ugly cause I told her not to talk to my mother that way and mom just calmly says, Sheryl, dont get in the car, just go into the restaurant.  I was still at that point willing to move the car, but she was done.  We went on in and sat down.. they actually followed us in there, altho the man looked totally embarrassed and never said a word.. but they left.  She just said to me,  “we dont need to tell your father about this right away”.   I dont think I was ever prouder of her than right then.

Soft as a kitten…

Mom always, well at least as long as I knew her, had this phobia about bugs , specifically worms.  She wouldnt set under the trees in the summer time for fear of a worm falling in her hair.  She was a manager at a finance company and my uncle would tease her he could come in with a worm on the end of a stick and she would give him everything she had.  She probably would have too.  Her other pet peeve was snakes ( mine too).   I can rememeber living on Ballewtown Rd in Blue Ridge in this little two bedroom house.  One day the front door was open, just the screen on it.  Mom was coming from kitchen into the living room and my dad, who was in the living room just hollered and told her to go back into the kitchen.  She didnt ask any questions, juts made a u turn and away she went.  I was watching tv or something oblivious think I was about 6 or 7. Dad gets up and closes the front door then walks out garage door and I hear a commotion and then see dad go walkin around the back of the house.  There had been a huge black snake stretched across the screen door, just sitting there.  Brrrrrrr….. that still gives me shivers.

Being a secret softy for animals, it always amazed me that she didnt seem to understand them. We were going to a singing somewhere, everyone all piled into the van.  We  passed some pasture land with little ponds on it and some cows were standing in the water, where it was cool.  After looking for a while, mom asked the question,  ” why are the cows standing in the water”?   Jimmy, another guy in the van who was driving didnt miss a beat, he said ” Joyce, they’re feeding the fish”. I dont think she said anything for a bit… she was trying to decide if he was serious.  Thing is, I think she bought it.  Was always a little niave about jokes too 🙂

But after I had been moved out for quite a while , been married and divorced, a couple of times LOL…. I found out she had kinda adopted a kitten that started coming around the house they finally built.  She would feed him and play with him on the back porch.  I think he might have been in her lap a couple times.   He was cute , solid black and didnt really have any interest in coming in the house, well maybe once or twice   One day, he just quit coming.  I think it secretly broke moms heart.   The animals I had over the years, when mom would leave, dad would let me sneak my dog or my cat in the house for a few minutes.  Mom would always know tho.  She would be like ” you had that animal in my house didnt you”? We both would just play dumb and say , no no, not at all.  She would just say I better not find a wet spot LOL.

 

The Cleavers

I know, some of you are now dated, inlcuding me.  But that was my parents.  My friend in West Virginia promised if I could not drink for a year she would come speak at my home group in Blue Ridge.  That was the easiest bet of my life.  She wasnt ready for Blue Ridge.  They came to the lead.   Lucy got nervous and made some comment about when she got drunk he pants fell down… my parents laughed their ass offf, I think she was embarrassed.

My parents were all about not interfering in my life.  They wanted me to be independent and live my own life.  I think they had cause to rehtink that at times, but they pretty well maintained it.  I owe them that.  I made a  lot of mistakes, but I needed to make them.   You dont learn anything  if you dont take chances. I took a bunch.  I learned a bunch.

My parents werent the Cleavers.  Not really.  They were damn close.

Im like 4.  Its christmas eve and I am a clueless child waiting on santa clause ( who will not come if you are not alseep!).  I make some comment bout how I hope he brings my ear plugs… big ones for stereos…. Dad went out and bought them that night.  I found this out much later.Another year, I found this tacky umbrella with a case I just had to have.  Mom said no.  Later she went back and bought it.   Yeah maybe they were the cleavers.

They always seemed to put me first.  Not in a bad way either. I  had to work for what I wanted.  The banker in my dad made sure I understood the value of a dollar and how to balance and keep a checkbook. I paid for my insurance on my first car, and tires etc.   My mom tried to teach me to cook… I shoulda paid more attention. I was more interested in boys at the time… wow I made the wrong choice lol.  She taught me how to be a lady. They both taught me how to treat people and how to be a friend.  We ate dinner together almost every night without fail, and mom was working full time.  The house was always clean and I dont think she stopped from the time she got home til near bedtime. And I always had what I needed for school, food, desserts, projects etc.   I have not inherited that trait it would appear.  I work, I sleep, thats all I do when I work lol.

Every once ina while I would have to ask my dad for money for something.  If it was something for school, I usually got it. But it was not without the” lecture” as I learned to call it.  It consisted of him having to walk to school  in the snow, uphill, both ways.  And one time he asked his dad for a quarter and got a story about how his dad needed a penny one time and had to work a week for it.  Sigh.  If they weren’t the Cleavers, they should have been 🙂

Pets and Children

All little girls want pets in their house. My first want was a pony.  I said we could keep him in the guest room, we didnt have any land.  That went over like a lead balloon.  My second thing was a kitten.  That I got.  It was an outdoor cat ” tiffany nicole” hey dont make fun of the name it was the late 70’s.  Mom had this thing about animals in the house.   To be fair, she wasnt my first pet.  I had a golden mix I think in grammer school.  Her name was skipper.  She was a great dog, again outside dog.  They kept her tied up in the garage when they were at work.  When we were getting ready to move, skippers line got cut.  I was told she went to a farm and was living free… just to be clear, I never bought that.  That was not the first time I learned my parents were evil.  The first time comes much earlier.  We were living on Loving Road in this little red house. I was maybe 3 and we had one car and mom took dad to work every day.  We lived by some really good neighbors thank goodness.  Went to church with them.  Anyway.. they didnt have a lot of money for entertainment but a kid is always free entertainment.  They were sitting in lawn chairs out in the yard and I was running around doing what kids do, or rather used to do outside,  and one of them told me if I could put salt on a birds tail I could catch it.  So I went in the house got the salt shaker and came outside, deteremined.   I chased those gosh darned birds all over the yard with that dang salt shaker and never could get a one.. the thing I remember most is my parents laughing their fool heads off.  Moral of the story.. if you can get close enough to put salt on a birds tail you can catch it.  I didnt know that.   I say thats child abuse LOL. But it was funny. I got her back.  My parents sang in a gospel group for like 14 yrs. When I was very little, I really didnt understand that whole concept. I would just wait til they were all up singing and sneak outside.  One day in a local church my mom got to missing me while she was up singing.  She came down and went outside.. it had been raining and it was almost Easter and I was sitting in a mud puddle in my stockings, but I had taken my dress off and had it folded beside me.  Hey, thats talent.

Other thing that happened in that house, my mom took dad to work one morning.. this was before the enlightened years of seatbelts and helmets etc and I was standing up beside mom in the car. When she turned, I fell over her arms, knocked her into the ditch head end up.  Our neighbor got me out the window and got her out the door.   Dad was not pleased.

Dads are People Too

I would be remiss if I didnt include growing up with dads family.  Another farm family more out in the boonies than mom.  4 kids, actually there were 5, one died as an infant and my aunt Juanita died when I was 3.   They said she was fishing off Notley Dam and fell…. there was some controversy about whether or not she fell or was pushed, was whole write up in the paper but who knows.  I know she loved to fish.   I kinda remember going to her funeral.  Down here, we dont hide our children from death, we just try to explain it.   Having said that, I had a great time growing up spending time at their farm.  Now Im sure our parents did it to get us out of the house for two weeks every summer, but off we’d go.  Now its way out on loving road and there was nothing around except red clay banks and pastures, creeks and blackberries. And Jimmies.  A Jimmy is like a donkey, but not.. mixed with a jack ass or something.   Bottom line, they are STUBBORN.  Try riding one.  You can do it, if your cousin holds a carrot in front of his nose and wont give it to him.  And then he gets pissed off.  I dont know a lot about my dad when he was little except he was blond and by all accounts a good boy.  It was his brother that was a rebel LOL.  Hot cars, hot women ( he married one of them).

Anyway , every year we were whisked off there for two weeks and we did a lot of stuff that kids today wont even understand.  We played barbie dolls, we tortured karens brother at every opportunity, we threw red  clay bombs at the dirt dobbers that live there ( they are like little bees).   We picked potatoes with grandpa and broke green beans with grandma and picked a gazillion blackberries ( we ate most of them).  One yr, my grandparents always had dogs and wild cats.. but one yr he took a bunch of puppies and put them in a bag and took them down to the river to drown them.  Karen and I were like 9. I was upset, but not like karen, she cried and cried.   I understood they couldnt  feed them, so did she, she just didnt like it.  Country was hard.

I dont have a lot of stories of dad as a kid , but I have stories of me growing up with him.  You have to have good upbringing to be a good dad.

My earliest memory of him , well I have a lot.  I know when he and mom got married, they didnt really have a pot to piss in.   They were living in Atlanta, I think dad was in law school and mom got pregnant with me, third pregnancy.  Apparnetly, I was a difficult child to conceive.  Somehow, I dont think anyone is shocked.  They eventually decided it would be better to raise a child around family and home.  Can I say this is possibly the best decision they ever made???? It gave me a sense of home and family that I cherish.  I think dad wanted a boy originally.. he denies it, but he took me fishing and well, fishing.  He never took me hunting except for mistletoe and I shot a few down myself.  And when we couldnt round up any fish at the lake or rivers, he would take me to a trout pond and we could catch dinner.  He didnt make me clean them but we cooked and ate em.   I learned an important lesson.. its not what you catch… its what you take… in our case we took RC Cola’s with peanuts in the bottom and crackers and vienna sausages.  Best lunch in the world.

They were always both at my school plays, concerts, ballgames, everything.   They never missed it.   They sent me to Europe my senior year when Im pretty sure they couldnt afford it.  The thing that gets me is mom wanted to go… she loved switzerland.. but she didnt go because she didnt want to get in my way and impede my experience.  All she asked was I keep a diary.  I read that diary after she died.  It was pretty lame. Awesome this and awesome that.  If I was her I would have went.  Dad controlled the money at the time and he just was like , whatever you guys want to do.   These people are called role models.

Even when I got married the first time… my dad was standing with me outside the church and said to me ” its not too late, you can take the money and go on a great trip by youself” I should have taken him up on it, but at the time all I could thinkn was ” so sweet”.   Nah, he was serious.

Corn Cribs and Snakes

Kids, this is something your parents wont tell you until you are old enough to be totally grossed out and shivering with the fear of it.  So Im telling you now.  If your father or grandfather has a corn crib, first thats a good thing.. fresh corn, yum!  However…..when you go to slide down said corn crib like a slide and your parents start yelling at you to get down.. listen to them.  Grandpa kept a black snake in his corn crib to keep away the rats.  Now thats all well and good but I dont want to be sliding down where there is snakes.  I dont care how “good” they are.  When I think of all the times I did stuff like that.. with impunity.  its scary.  But thats country life.  In the south anyway.  I talk about it like its a bad thing but it wasnt.

Even Moms Were Little Once

I have been meaning ever since mom died to write some stuff down.  Not even sure why I’m writing it down, I dont have kids.  But I want someone to know about her.   She was born right here in Mineral Bluff, Ga.  Number 4 of 11 kids.   I asked grandpa after I was grown,  ” why did you have 11 children?”.  He didnt even blink. He said “because we didnt have tv.” Grandpa was something of a jokester.

This is probably going to be boring unless  your family.

I dont know how old mama was, but I know that for Christmas they only got one item.  And maybe some candy.  One Christmas, mom found a pair of boots in a catalog. I think they may have been rain boots but not sure about that.  Christmas morning, all the gifts were under the tree but mom’s.  At breakfast.. someone knocked on the door and grandpa asked mom to get it.  There were her boots with a note that said something like.. ” sorry they were in the bottom of my bag and I didnt see them”.  Yeah, we have it bad these days 🙂

My grandpa was my hero.. well, all my grandparents… but when you have that many kids I guess you have to get creative.  Apparently, all the kids had a candy bar in the fridge.  Someone took mom’s and no one would fess up to it.   My grandpa got the ironing board out, set it up and got a big flashlight.  Then he lined all the kids up in a row and told them that he could find out who did it by laying them on the ironing board and shining the light over their stomachs.  You gotta love it……Im not exactly sure how many kids he got through, I just know that one of my uncles couldnt take the pressure and fessed up.

I also have one more story.. now mind you, none of these have been verified… but she wasnt a  liar.  My grandparents had a farm of sorts, in the middle of , well not a town…. more like a stop sign.  He kept bees , he and all my uncles hunted  and he had pigs.  No one can make sausage like my grandma. And my grandpa once got a letter that was labeled ” to the man behind the gas station that keeps the bees”.  He got it without a problem. My earliest memories of being there was there was a big apple tree at the edge of the yard by the garden.  Every fall, there would be a pig head hanging there and they would have a big fire in the metal trash can and a pig on a wooden slat skinning it.  ( sorry all you pork eaters but it is how it was done).  I loved that time of year, they wouldnt let me go to kill them, but we always got sausage ( fresh) and bacon and country ham that grandpa would hang in the smoker ( it was a brick room) and well cracklin cornbread ( which I will never eat) and grandpa got feet and brains.  He could have those as far as I was concerned.

They also had a lot of pasture land… so the story goes.. my mom wandered off and climbed some tree in the middle of nowhere and couldnt get down. She starting yelling for someone to come and get her.  It would seem she was up there for a while.  Finally, one of her brothers heard her and got her down.

Im still unclear on when she met dad but he was 8 years older.  In those days, that wasnt a big  deal.  She was a cheerleader in high school and married him before her senior yr.   He didnt think he could wait another year.  Tsk tsk.   But I think its kinda sweet.